The soceeros played well, so many shots at goal, but luck wasn’t on their side. They deserved at least one.

Having sat up and watched the game (went to bed @ 3:45am) and subsequently getting up the next morning to work, i wondered what the economic cost to this country is in terms of lost performance as opposed to patriotism and enthusiasm for the beautiful game (instead of those hideous NRL games).

The document reaches three broad conclusions: unfair dismissal laws and minimum wages were not found to have harmed employment, and collective wage bargaining across companies are strongly related to low unemployment.

According to the document, co-ordinated wage bargaining “is found to significantly reduce unemployment, lending support to the view that in centralised/co-ordinated bargaining systems, unions and employers are able to internalise the adverse employment consequences of excessive wage claims”.

The document suggests that the main thrust of WorkChoices is counterproductive if the object of the changes is a more efficient labour market.

Efficiency requires reaching the right trade-off between rigidity and flexibility, backed up by active labour market programs to ensure the unemployed have relevant skills.

Miss O (at uni) was shoe shopping at an upmarket shoe shop yesterday and came home all abuzz about being offered a job there starting tomorrow. How’s that dad, I didn’t even have to have an interview? No dear, you just have two arms, two legs, without tatts and piercings, don’t chew gum and can string two sentences together. The world is your oyster my dear.

That was a great game. It would have been nice to watch one of Bresciano’s thunderbolts go in, or Viduka’s chip over the goalie (what a treasure that man is).

But it was an exciting, open game, with lots of risk-taking in the midfield. The lads really took it up to them. Brazilian flair and precision finishing in made the difference in the end, as it so often does.

A draw against Croatia will be enough as long as Japan doesn’t beat Brazil.

Yes James agree a great game. The first goal just showed how little time or space you can afford to give these guys on the ball around the box. You’ve got to jump on them asap. A good exponent of this sort of defending is Fabio Carnavaro, the Italian captain. Very little “jockeying” goes on.

Croatia will be an interesting game, not the least for Viduka, who was importuned by Franjo Tudjman no less, to play for Croatia. And they have 3 “effective” Aussies in their squad: Simunic, who starts, Seric and Didulica.

Got a comment in the other thread on “soccer vs football”.

Croatia didn’t look too assured against a struggling Japan.

What a wonderful result for us to make it to the 2nd round. Brilliant!!!

observa,
Employers regularly go around dismissing their most productive workers. It is all a part of the “let’s cut off our noses to spite our faces” campaign being run by this vicious and evil government of ours. With the large and spiralling unemployment rate, employers can easily get away with it.

AR, I’ve suggested before that the exaggerated tendency to downsize and/or outsource is at least partly driven by an externality, one that disconnects Social Security costs from the employment decisions (at the employer end as well as the employee end). These in turn are merely the result of a previous composition for Vagrancy Costs, so just cutting Social Security would not be a cure.

Sadly, my ISP has mucked up my pages so I cannot give a link to my material just at present.